Scott Craighead
Vice President of Exhibitions and Events
International Association of Exhibitions and Events

a2z Automates Hosted Buyer ProcessFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/27/2009

A growing trend for major events is to add a hosted buyer program to help attract key buyers and deliver a higher ROI to exhibitors. Event organizers that deliver high-qualified buyers (who set-up and show-up for appointments with premium exhibitors) are more likely to retain and grow their exhibitor participation.

Hosted buyer programs can be very labor intensive to implement and manage. Usually they involve a rigorous buyer qualification process, assistance with travel arrangements, and hundreds of individual appointments to set-up and manage. “a2z’s latest innovation significantly streamlines and improves the appointment set-up and management process”, says Rajiv Jain, a2z’s CEO.

With a2z’s Hosted Buyer application, participating exhibitors can profile their ideal prospects and receive system generated recommendations for their best potential appointments. They can conduct key buyer searches, drill into their profile and “cherry pick” the individuals that they would like to meet with most.

Hosted buyers can identify appointment preferences by doing searches based on exhibitor name, keyword, exhibitor category, product or other defined criteria. After completing a buyer profile, a2z’s system recommends specific exhibitors the buyer should consider visiting…”the more complete the profile, the more relevant the recommendations”, says Jain. Attendees are also able to conduct research and bookmark their “favorite” exhibitors and even identify exhibitors they don’t wish to meet with. With a click of a button, they can send an email to any exhibitor requesting more information.

“We used a2z’s Hosted Buyer application at The Motivation Show this year for our Preferred Buyer program,” said Peter Erickson, Managing Director. “The application worked flawlessly in allowing our key buyers to select the exhibitors they wished to meet with at show time and confirmed appointments by date and time. For those buyers that did not make the required eight appointments on their own, the system even assigned the remaining appointment slots with exhibitors that best matched their interests, based on the program application they had submitted.” Erickson continued, “Based on this initial success, we plan to expand the Preferred Buyer program in 2010 to include more than 250 key buyers and 125 exhibitor sponsors. The a2z Hosted Buyer application is a very robust and user friendly solution to the complex and important issue of matching pre-qualified buyers with the products and services they are seeking in an effort to improve the ROI of both our key exhibitors and attendees.”

Benefits for Event Management - While a2z’s new system is designed to improve the quality of engagement for both key buyers and participating exhibitors, the quantifiable ROI is delivered through the automation and management of the individual appointments. Most shows with a hosted buyer program will require each qualifying attendee to have 8 – 10 prescheduled appointments, per show day. The a2z Hosted Buyer application fully automates this arduous process, allowing show organizers to focus on customer service and travel arrangements. Each attendee and exhibitor receives a personalized itinerary for their appointments.

a2z’s Hosted Buyer module is available either as a standalone application or in conjunction with a2z’s exhibit management and floor plan solutions. a2z’s hosted buyer application also integrates via web services with most registration applications and vendors.